Forever and Always

Found and Lost

He tried to pull me into a hug, but I backed away.
"What's the matter?" He asked as I just stared.
My mind raced around all the thing that I had to go through before I met Glenn and Maggie. This asshole of a shitface didn't help at all. At the first sight of a Walker, he bailed.
He looked at me in confusion and bent down so that we were at eye level.
I heard footsteps behind me. I turned and saw Carl come over with Jacob in his hands.
Michael gasped in surprise and tried to reach over to take Jacob from Carl, the over protective boy backed away.
"What the hell are you doing?"Carl asked.
I realized that it must have seemed weird that someone that Carl had never met was trying to take the small boy that Carl had come to calling his own little brother.
"Carl meet Michael, my stepfather. Michael, this is Carl, my boyfriend."
Carl glared at the older man and reluctantly handed Jacob over. He glanced at me to check my expression. Even though I was angry to the point where I wanted to strangle Michael, I tried to look as nonchalant as possible.
As soon as Michael took hold of Jacob, the baby started to cry. Many of the surrounding people turned to stare at us and the fussy child.
Michael tried to rock him, but the infant wouldn't quiet.
I glanced at Carl and he understood the message. He stepped to Michael and took the baby out of his arms.
As soon as Jacob was snuggled against Carl's chest, he stopped crying.
I guess I'm not the only one who's pissed at him.
Carl glared at Michael once more and turned to go sit with Daryl, Glenn, and Judy.
Chris turned to me,"What's his problem?"
I snickered,"Which one? Carl or Jacob?"
"Both."
If looks could kill, Michael would be laying on the floor right now,"Well Jacob hasn't seen you for as long as I can remember seeing you. He only knew you for a few months before the fucking apocalypse happened."
"Hey watch your mou-"
"And Carl's pissed because he came to care for the both of us when you couldn't. You left us alone."
He signed,"No I didn't. You have your mother. Where is she anyway?"
I pushed back a few tears,"Dead. She saved me and Jacob. She's dead now and you didn't even know because you were a coward and you LEFT."
I was shouting now and many people turned around yet again to see what the big commotion was about.
I saw the heads of Glenn, Carl, and Daryl jerk in my direction.
I shook my head and turned towards them,"Just leave us alone. I have a new family. Ones that won't leave when things get tough."
"Jocel-"
"Don't."

Some men who were town leaders became the new leaders of us all and called a meeting to discuss the future of the remaining.
The only problem was that it was for those who were 18 and older.
"It's not fair," Carl complained as he plopped down onto the bed that I was sitting on.
The leaders had been stuck with the duty to assign bed and sections of City Hall to distribute to groups. Our group got two beds and a rather small section even though we were one of the largest groups here.
"Well, life ain't fair,"Daryl replied as he walked out and Glenn trailed behind him.
Carl turned to me,"We are basically adult and we can't even go to the meeting?"
I looked at him in confusion. I didn't understand how we were almost adults and we were "sixteen"
"This world has basically sped up the process of growing up for us." he explained.
I nodded as I looked down at the book that was on my lap.
It was about teenagers who lived in a post apocalyptic world and were forced to murder each other.
I felt sympathy for the character because, basically, they were us.
We were being forced to kill those who we loved in order to save them from a worse fate.
I continued to read until I heard Daryl's heavy footsteps come into the room.
"What happened?" Carl asked as he bounced off the bed.
"They want to rebuild the city. They want everyone to go back to being normal. Like nothing happened."
I sighed,"But it did."
Daryl huffed,"Yeah. It did. And they want to make sure that it never happens again. They made some new rules too. No one is allowed out of the city. They don't know influence are any Walkers are there, am we have to stay here."
"We can't just pretend like this never happened. "Carl said.
Daryl smirked,"Exactly. We're not going to. We're leaving."

Okay, soundtrack is Bye Bye Bye by NSYNC. And I wanted to see if anyone could guess what book Jocelyn was reading. 😌😌😌